TAKING A GRILLING

The City of Chicago is suing the Chicago Park District and the people who own the Park Grill in Millennium Park because the city feels  the Park District had no right to enter into a lease with the restaurant in the first place and the lease, “does not meet commercially reasonable standards.” The case complaint, calling for declaratory relief and filed on December 1st, is 16 pages long with 159 pages of exhibits.  The city’s Constitutional and Commercial Litigation Division of the Corporation Council signed the suit.  The background details of how the lease came to be play out like the machinations of a soap opera.  I replay the episodes below.

In late 2001, Matthew A. O'Malley and James Horan proposed Park Grill and Park Cafe to "provide both white-tablecloth meals and picnic-hamper fare for visitors in Millennium Park".   O’Malley once worked for disgraced U.S. Rep. Dan Rostenkowski and runs the Chicago Firehouse Restaurant where then Mayor Daley was a frequent diner.  Horan is president of Blue Plate Catering, which runs a café at Gallery 37, an after-school art program created by Maggie Daley, the former Mayor’s late wife.

Many of the investors, who bought shares in the restaurant partnership for $200,000, have names that read like a Christmas card list of former Mayor Daley.

(1)  Fred Barbara- nephew of the late Alderman Fred Roti who has ties to the Hired Truck Program scandal and the blue bag recycling controversy.

(2) Relatives of Daley’s former political advisor, Timothy Degnan.

(3) Two neighbors of Daley; Ray Chinn an O’Hare airport contractor and Rick Simon who runs a janitorial business with city ties and was former chairman of the Chicago Convention and Tourism Board.

(4) Former Congressman Morgan Murphy who had business dealings with convicted labor union official John Serpico.

Oh, by the way, the architectural metal company that did work on the structure of the restaurant was owned by the son of then Alderman Burton Natarus.

Three groups submitted proposals to the Park District to run the restaurant in September 2001. The Park Grill group's proposal was twice as long as the other two but promised the Park District the lowest revenues.  But guess who proposal was accepted?  O’Malley’s group won the rights to run the restaurant and souvenir and concession stands in Millennium Park.  

After 18 months of negotiating, on February 11, 2003, a 20-year contract was signed that included the Park District paying for water, gas and garbage collection.  The refuse pick up alone costs taxpayers about $245,000/annually.

With all of the previous information not being juicy enough, we now hear the soap opera’s ominous music playing.  During the time of the negotiations between the Park District and O’Malley’s investor group, Laura Foxgrover, a Park District official gave birth to O’Malley’s child!  It turns out she used to work for him as director of operations at his Chicago Firehouse Restaurant.

While she had written a letter in May 2002 recusing herself from the negotiations she never gave a reason and never told her superiors that her maternity leave was to give birth to O’Malley’s daughter born in September, 2002.

Even though Foxgrover recused herself from negotiations she testified before a Chicago City Council meeting in October 2003 in favor of the Park Grill getting a liquor license and on the same day testified for him to get a liquor license at his Clock Tower Café.

In July 2003, while she was acting director of park services, she sent an e-mail to O’Malley’s contractor which said she was the point person for the Park District if he had any questions.  What happened to her recusing herself?

So one would think that an ethics investigation of Foxgrover would result in her losing her job?  NO, this is Chicago.  The ruling was that she did not violate the district’s ethics ordinance and could keep her $90,000/year job as the Park District’s director of development.  She stayed a few years and then in 2008 left to work again for O’Malley’s restaurant management company. 

 

Park Grill opened on November 24, 2003 and in its first year of operations only paid $162,656.72 in rent.  The 2004/2005 Zagat Survey named the restaurant among the five "Top Newcomers" to Chicago. According to a Sun-Times story, The Park Grill began making money for its investors in its third year of operation, 2006, when investors split $527,250 in profits.  According to stories in Restaurants and Institutions magazine, in 2008 the Park Grill was named one of the top 100 highest-grossing independent restaurants in the US, serving approximately 300,000 meals and grossing approximately $12,000,000 in sales, making it the seventh largest independent restaurant in terms of sales in Chicago in 2007.

Now that Mayor Richard Daley has retired, his clout-heavy friends have lost their ability to get away with insider deals.  How sad for them but how lucky for the taxpayers of Chicago.  Now Mayor Rahm Emanuel‘s law department is looking to invalidate the restaurant’s contract with the law suit filed last week.

According to the Chicago Tribune  the city had to move quickly here because, “Corporation Counsel Steve Patton said in a statement that the city has been talking with the restaurant's owners about a settlement but felt it needed to act after recently receiving a letter saying the facility is being sold to a new owner, reportedly a company controlled by restaurateur Larry Levy.”

Just before the curtain drops on this latest episode of “Taking a Grilling,” it is important to know who the attorney for The Park Grill investor group is--none other than Michael Shakman!  The same attorney who is best known for the federal court Shakman Decrees, which enjoined patronage hiring and firing of public employees in Chicago and Illinois.

So he was against patronage when it came to employment, but is now defending a company that got its deal though political clout!  If you tried to sell this script as TV show, nobody would buy it because it is too unbelievable.  

The only grilling that really took place here was the one suffered by the taxpayers of Chicago who were denied millions of dollars in revenues because of this sweetheart deal.  They got no cake and did not get to eat it too.